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Friday, June 20, 2014

"I have yet to meet a refugee who wanted to be a refugee and even less so, who wished to remain a refugee. Palestine refugees are no different. Their call for a just and lasting solution to their plight must be heard." UNWRA's Pierre Krähenbühl on World Refugee Day

Op Ed for World Refugee Day by the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Pierre Krähenbühl

One hundred and twenty children were recently allowed out of Yarmouk,
the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, to sit public exams. The
fourteen-year-olds emerged from the apocalyptic city-scape they call
home shell-shocked and bewildered, child victims of one of the most
pitiless conflicts of our age.

Two weeks later those same children returned to Yarmouk to be
reunited with their families, to a place where UN food deliveries are
meeting just a quarter of the nutritional requirements of over 18,000
civilians trapped there in an extraordinarily harsh environment, an
environment in which the absence of medical care can result in death
from conditions that are otherwise easily treated and cured.

It was a bitter-sweet, profoundly tragic moment that cruelly exposed
the hopelessness confronting those young students. Moreover, it was a
metaphor that poignantly encapsulated the unsustainability of the
Palestine refugee crisis in the Near East.

In Syria more than fifty per cent of the 550,000 UNRWA registered
refugees have been displaced by the conflict with over half of the 12
Palestinian refugee camps where we work transformed into theatres of
war. On World Refugee Day, the plight of this often forgotten
population must be acknowledged and the dramatic context in which they
struggle to survive understood in all its complexity.

Beyond Syria, unsustainability confronts Palestine refugees living in
the West Bank where the human impact of the Israeli occupation and
settlement expansion is multi-dimensional and profound.

Palestine
refugees are subject to a permit system that prevents freedom of
movement. Many are forced to deal with home demolitions and land
expropriations. Children and ordinary civilians face increased threats
from the use of live ammunition. The West Bank barrier is destroying
whole communities. The occupation is synonymous with de-development,
stifling economic life with predictable human consequences. Food
insecurity in Palestine has reached 33 per cent, affecting 1.6 million
people according to UNRWA’s latest food survey.

In Gaza, unsustainability has many yardsticks. One in particular has
struck me profoundly. The number of Palestine refugees coming to UNRWA
for food handouts has increased from 80,000 in 2000 to over 800,000
today. When last in Gaza I met a once prosperous businessman who has now
joined the UNRWA food line, a tragic transformation which puts a human
face to the notion of this untenable situation. In Gaza there are many.
Youth unemployment stands at 65 per cent.

Unemployment among women is 80
per cent. Unsustainability has an alarming environmental aspect in
Gaza. 90 percent of water is unsafe to drink. The entire aquifer is
likely to be unusable as early as 2016, with the damage irreversible by
2020 if present blockade policies are not changed. There are few
immediate signs that they will be.

Projections for the numbers of Palestine refugees UNRWA may have to
serve in the coming years underlines the unsustainability of the refugee
crisis. In 2012, 5.27 million people were registered with UNRWA. This
is expected to increase to 5.75 million in 2016 and 6.46 million in
2021. The number of those registered with us as “poor” will rise to 1.7
million in 2021.

With each passing day, it becomes an increasing imperative to listen
to the voices of the dispossessed and heed their enduring warnings about
loss and fear. Decades on, and with so many other crises affecting the
Middle-East and the world, there is a real risk that their fate will be
overshadowed and seen as an “old story”. I would argue that neglecting
the plight of Palestine refugees is a risk the world cannot take.

Yet from Yarmouk, to the dismal Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon
swollen by over 50,000 new arrivals from Syria, to the refugee
communities trapped behind the barrier in the West Bank and on to the
downward spiral in Gaza, unsustainability haunts almost all aspects of
life. I have yet to meet a refugee who wanted to be a refugee and even
less so, who wished to remain a refugee. Palestine refugees are no
different. Their call for a just and lasting solution to their plight
must be heard.

Until this is achieved UNRWA has a transformative role to play.
During times of relative peace, our human development work in education,
health, relief and social services promotes stability, dignity and
respect for rights. In times of war, our emergency assistance builds
resilience and mitigates the denial of rights to some, albeit an
inadequate extent.

Now in our seventh decade, UNRWA’s contribution speaks for itself: we
have achieved some of the highest literacy rates in the Middle-East,
dramatic reductions in child and maternal mortality. Our commitment
rivals that of any humanitarian actor, working under fire to provide
emergency relief in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. This will continue until a
solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees is found. I understood
from day one that UNRWA’s mandate is not for sale.

I believe passionately that UNRWA’s contribution is inextricably
linked to that of the refugees who make up the vast majority of our
staff. Like all refugees, the Palestinians are also individuals with
achievements and pride. They are victims of injustice, of occupation,
blockade and conflict. They are also actors in their own development
with skills that many in the world would envy. Palestinians are justly
proud of the comparative literacy rates of their children and the
highest attainment levels of generations of professionals.

UNRWA’s efforts will focus both on mobilizing hosts and donors to
preserve and further strengthen our achievements, while raising the
importance of increasingly recognizing that international assistance
must come with the promotion of rights and dignity. Let us not forget
that this is a crisis with a human face be it those shell-shocked
children in Yarmouk, the ex-businessman in the UNRWA food line in Gaza
or any of the five million individual refugees registered with us. No
amount of aid will ever make up for the denial of their rights and
dignity.